Gran Turismo Goes Online

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First impressions from the online version of GF5 Prologue

By Anoop Gantayat

Polyphony Digital's Christmas gift to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue players (the game is out in Japan, in case you weren't aware) arrived around noon on Christmas Day in the form of an update enabling online play.

[Sound of a Nissan GT-R's breaks screeching]

What's that? You thought Prologue was supposed to be online from the start?

While the game was originally announced that way, just prior to its Japanese release earlier this month, Sony announced that online play wouldn't make it into the initial build. Instead, it would be enabled as part of a Christmas update.

And so, here we are.

To make your copy of GT5 Prologue online-ready, you simply boot up the title and, when prompted at the title screen, select to connect to the PlayStation Network. The game takes care of the rest.

Unfortunately, as with the GT.tv download section of the game, Polyphony hasn't made use of a background downloading scheme for this update, so you lose access to your PS3 during the download. Our download, conducted in Tokyo during the afternoon of the 25th, took just 10 minutes, though, so this wasn't too big of an issue.

The first thing you'll notice after agreeing to one of those online end user agreement things that nobody actually reads are changes to the GT5 Prologue menus. The game now includes options for "Online" and "Ranking."

"Ranking," is just what the name suggests: an online ranking viewer. You can filter rankings by track, car type, tire type, and even physics mode (standard or professional). The game lets you view and save replays for the top racers on each track.

The real meat of the update is in the Online mode. Select this option and you're taken to a race selection screen. On this first day of online play, the game has just four live race events against other racers and four time trials where you attempt to beat other players' best times.

Here's a quick look at what's available on GT5 Prologue Online day 1 (these are in order from top to bottom, for those who are trying to play through the import):

Upper-level race event at Fuji: three laps, max sixteen players, all using Elize 111R in professional mode with S1 tires.

Beginner's time trial at Daytona: using middle car class

Mid-level time trial at Eiger: using sports car class

Upper-level time trial at Daytona: using super car class

Upper-level time trial in London: using super car class in professional mode with S1 tires.

All races, both events and time trials, have various limitations, with some requiring that you have certain class cars in your possession, others limiting your tire type or forcing you to chose a particular simulation type (professional or standard). Some races have rolling starts, while others are grid-based. Races also have different levels of penalty for those who chose to take shortcuts.

Every race also comes with an expiration date. The races we were able to try out all end on January 10. Presumably more events will be added before then. The race description area also has an area for listing start dates, suggesting that events may be announced before their official starting date.

Select one of the live race events, and the game takes you to the introduction screen for the course just like in a normal offline race. From there, you can chose to view the course introduction video. Select to start a race, and the game begins searching for opponents. In our experience, this took about 30 seconds.

Once all opponents are found, the game jumps into the race. Well, almost. While load times aren't a problem in offline play, they sure are in online play. We discovered waits of over two minutes to start up a race. Hopefully this is something that will be fixed with future optimizations.

Aside from the long load times, we found our first few online races to be smooth, with no lag issues. Best of all, the game is super quick about getting you back into the online menu screen after a race so that you can select another event.

Load times don't get in the way of trying out the online time trial races, which appear to be just ranked versions of the time trial option available in the offline arcade mode, complete with restrictions to make sure everyone is competing on even ground. When attempting to beat your times, you can chose to load up ghost data from top-ranked players. Online ghost data is also now available for use in the offline time trial mode as well.

If you've played other online racers, GT5 Prologue's online options may seem a bit bare-bones at this point. You can't select opponents from your friend list, you can't engage in voice or text chat, and having only four events from the outset is a bit disappointing.

We trust Polyphony will be addressing these issues over the coming months so that when GT5 Prologue goes international early next year, its online mode will be ready to compete.